


In Any Universe, You Are My Dark Star

by lookingforthestars



Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Post Finale, lots of angst here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22887421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lookingforthestars/pseuds/lookingforthestars
Summary: Chase has to remember - even if it hurts.
Relationships: Chase Stein/Gertrude Yorkes
Comments: 3
Kudos: 57





	In Any Universe, You Are My Dark Star

**Author's Note:**

> This story was a Struggle. It’s probably not great but it’s also probably not terrible, so I’m posting it anyway and hoping it makes sense.

There’s a difference between a nightmare and a memory.

Chase realized that years ago. He certainly has enough of both. There are the nightmares – populated by monsters and his greatest fears taking shape. And there are memories – reliving the abuse, the beatings, the screaming, the blood.

The memories are worse, because the fear is palpable. He remembers how it felt when he thought he was going to die, Victor Stein aiming the Fistigons right at him with no remorse on his face. That wasn’t the only time, just the one he remembers most vividly, without all the years of suppressing it and rewriting history in his head. The memories are terrifying in a way that regular nightmares can never be. He’s lived out his worst nightmares and no imaginary bogeyman is scarier than what he has already faced and survived.

There’s a difference, and he doesn’t know how to explain that this feels like a memory.

It _can’t_ be. These dreams that have been jolting him awake for a week straight are not memories. At least, they’re not his memories. He suspects he might know whose memories they are, but the possibility is so crazy he barely allows himself to consider it.

“Chase?” Gert’s voice is thick with sleep, and she sits up, pressing the heels of her hands against her bleary eyes. “Why are you up?”

He hates waking her, even though he’s told her approximately three million times that he doesn’t mind getting up when she’s having issues with her anxiety. She probably feels the same way about this, but it doesn’t assuage his guilt. “Bad dream. Go back to sleep.”

Gert shifts her body to the side, propping herself against the headboard. He’s pretty sure she can’t see him at all without her glasses, but she makes no move to find them, because it’s dark anyway and this is a common occurrence. This is their agreement. Chase holds her through the panic attacks, and she comforts him through the nightmares.

He hates that Gert struggles with the anxiety, with anything, really, but it makes them feel more like partners, like equals, instead of him being a burden on her.

Chase has fewer nightmares when she’s with him, anyway. He wonders if it’s the same for her, with her panic attacks.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Gert is squinting a little in the dim light, her hair pushed up on one side from the pillow, and Chase can’t help but smile. She looks adorable, and he’s just a blur to her right now so she won’t call him out on it.

She quirks her eyebrow, and Chase realizes she’s waiting for a response. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the first idea what to tell her. He can’t even make sense of the broken images playing out in his head, let alone explain them at three in the morning in a way that won’t sound like he’s having a psychotic break.

“Tomorrow, okay?” he murmurs, wrapping his arms around Gert and pulling her back down onto the mattress with him. She goes willingly, curling up against him and tucking her head into his shoulder.

The list of things that he loves about Gert Yorkes is very long and always growing. But right now, the thing he loves most is knowing that whatever’s happening to him, she won’t let him go through it alone.

* * *

This seems very not good.

Gert wasn’t entirely awake last night and acquiesced easily to Chase pulling her back into sleep, but the look on his face right now makes her wonder if she should have taken his nightmare more seriously.

“Honey, you’re starting to freak me out.” She shares a worried glance with Nico, who’s standing on the other side of the kitchen island. Chase had asked them both to follow him, insisting he would explain, but they’re alone and he still hasn’t spoken. His silence is really stressing her out, and she’s almost grateful for Nico’s presence because it keeps her from obsessing that maybe Chase is finally going to dump her.

“Sorry.” His voice is low, like this is all a secret. She gets keeping secrets from Molly, who is a literal child and needs to be protected even if she doesn’t want to be. But it’s a little strange that Nico is here and not Karolina or Alex. “But I need help, and I don’t want everyone to know.”

Nico glances at the door, and Gert can tell that the thought of keeping a secret from Karolina is already making Nico itch. “What is it?”

Chase exhales heavily, leaning his weight against the island. “You’re going to think I’m crazy,” he starts slowly. “And I don’t really know how to explain it, honestly. I’ve been having these dreams every night, but I don’t think they’re just nightmares. I think they actually happened, just…just not to me.” Gert is so confused that she briefly wonders if _this_ is a dream and her brain is playing tricks on her. “Well, I guess it was me, but not me in this timeline. Future me.”

Nico is clearly absorbing all of this better than Gert, because she has the presence of mind to ask, “What did you see?”

“It’s just bits and pieces right now, but…” He casts a furtive glance at the door and drops his voice even further, forcing Gert and Nico to move closer to hear him. “Mostly I see Alex. He turns evil, like our parents. He’s working with someone else to betray us – I don’t really know much about him, just that he’s definitely not on our side.”

She meets Chase’s eyes, and he looks _scared_. Gert has no idea how to respond to what he’s saying, so she settles for grabbing his hand and holding it tightly. “You think those are your memories from the timeline where I died? How is that even possible?”

Chase shrugs weakly. “Trust me, I’ve gone over it a million times and the best explanation I can think of is that I was standing right next to him when he was erased from existence. Maybe his memories were transferred to me, somehow. Is that insane?”

“Yes, that’s completely insane,” Nico snaps, tapping her fingers agitatedly against the counter. “But not the craziest thing that’s ever happened to us.”

Gert has to agree. Their lives are full of inexplicable things, like her connection to Old Lace or the Staff’s powers. Gert stopped trying to force things to make sense years ago.

“Pirates of Penance!” Gert blurts out, her eyes going wide. Nico and Chase snap to attention. “Okay, so, I saw Chase the day before we learned about our parents. Obviously, I didn’t know he was from the future then, although it would explain why he was acting so weird.”

“Weird how?” Chase asks, a hint of jealousy and concern in his tone. Gert wants to roll her eyes, but it doesn’t seem appropriate when her boyfriend is in crisis.

“Relax, I just mean…different. Anyway, he had a scar right here.” She traces a path along her neck to her collarbone. “He told me it was for Pirates of Penzance, that play the theater club was doing.”

Chase sucks in a breath. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I mean, you kinda also told me I was beautiful, so I’ve never forgotten that moment, trust me.”

He looks like he’s seen a ghost. “Those idiots were harassing you. You got mad at me because I let it slip that you had anxiety.”

Gert’s jaw drops, and for a long second she and Chase just stare at each other. “Yeah,” she breathes. “Um, holy shit.”

“Okay, this is freaky,” Nico mutters. “But that was the timeline where we lost Gert. Right? You changed history, so we have no idea what’s going to happen. And Alex is our _friend_. We’ve been through so much, I just…” She shakes her head. “I can’t imagine him betraying us, okay? I don’t want to imagine it.”

Gert can focus on how truly nuts this is later. And she will. But now is not the time. “Tandy said we couldn’t trust him,” she manages, her throat strangely dry. “He spent a long time in the Dark Dimension. It changed him. Maybe it’s already started.”

Nico opens her mouth and shuts it a few times, like she’s losing an internal debate with herself. “Well, wouldn’t he have these memories, too? Future Alex evaporated right next to future you.”

“I don’t know,” Chase says, looking just as shaken up as Gert feels. “But if he is and he’s not telling us, shouldn’t that be a red flag?”

Nico grumbles something under her breath before asking, “Okay, what exactly do you want me to do?”

Chase runs a hand through his hair. “Use the Staff to bring back my memories. They’re already in my head, there’s just something blocking them. But if I know how Alex ends up this way, maybe I can help him. Stop him from ever going down that path.”

“I can try, but…”

“But that’s dangerous, Chase!” Gert hisses, grabbing his arm. “What if something goes wrong and the Staff screws your memories up even more? Or gives you brain damage?”

“Okay!” Nico announces loudly, cutting off Chase before he can respond. “I’m going to give you some time to talk about this, and I’ll be in the bathroom…mildly hyperventilating.”

She backs out of the kitchen, but Gert barely notices. Chase is mirroring her body language, arms crossing in front of his chest, and she knows they’re in for a battle. “You can’t be serious about this. Even if Nico doesn’t turn you into a vegetable, you’re getting years of bad memories dumped into your brain all at once. Do you know what kind of trauma that could cause?”

“Honestly, I don’t know how much new trauma is going to move the needle,” he says flatly, and Gert winces. “Yeah, it’s a risk, but is it as much of a risk as not knowing? Alex may be a pain in the ass, but if something’s wrong, we have to help him. We’re a team, remember?”

“Yes, we’re a team, so you shouldn’t decide this alone. What if this changes everything?”

“We’re not changing the timeline, Gert, we’re just-.”

She curls her hands into fists by her side. “That’s not what I meant!”

Chase goes silent, which is somehow a hundred times harder to deal with than when he’s yelling at her. Because she doesn’t know what to say, how to put all her fears in words. She doesn’t even know which fears are valid, which are selfish, and which are a product of her anxiety.

All she knows is that they’re _happy_. She and Chase have been healing since they defeated Morgan, the whole team has, and she knows that kind of peace can’t last forever. But she has no idea what Chase will remember, so she runs through an endless number of _what if_ scenarios in her head. What if he was with someone else after she was gone? What if he hates her for ruining his life by dying? What if he realizes that he was pining after this image in his head that the real her could never measure up to? What does she do then?

Chase sighs, stepping closer. “You’re worried about _us_ ,” he says like it’s written all over her face, and it very well might be. “Gert, there’s nothing that would change the way I feel about you, and if there was, it definitely wouldn’t be the memories of someone who spent years trying to get you back.”

She wants to keep arguing, because she’s scared and fighting feels better than crying, but unfortunately, she knows he’s right. Gert caves, letting Chase pull her close again, committing his arms and his skin and his scent to memory. Just in case.

* * *

“Are you sure about this?” Nico asks for probably the fourteenth time. They’ve attempted crazier things with the Staff, but typically in the heat of the moment, with no other choice but certain death. Chase is more freaked out than he lets on to Gert, but he knows the memories will drive him crazy if he doesn’t unlock them, and he won’t let Alex become the person he’s seen. Not if he can do something about it.

He nods, giving Gert a small smile. Chase wishes she was sitting on the bed with him, but he doesn’t want her to get hurt if something goes wrong, so she’s standing on the other side of the room. Her face is pale.

Nico takes a deep breath. “ _Restore his memories!_ ” she shouts, thrusting the Staff into the air.

His vision whites out, and a searing pain spikes through his head, burning like lightning. Chase lurches forward, holding his head in his hands as he yells. He thinks maybe Gert is shouting too, but everything is drowned out by the excruciating sensations.

It feels like it will never end, and Chase wonders if this is his punishment for messing with time – eternal and relentless agony. But it does end, subsiding as quickly as it came. Chase gasps for air, clutching hard at the sheets. His brain feels scrambled, like he woke up in the middle of a dream and doesn’t know where he is.

And then it all clicks into place, nine years of memories downloaded way too fast, and he hurts even worse. The pain isn’t searing or burning – it’s an empty space, like his heart was ripped out of his chest and nothing was ever put there to replace it. An ache that was so deep and lasted for so long, Chase isn’t sure how he kept breathing.

 _Gert._ He knows she’s okay, he saved her, but he doesn’t quite believe it until his eyes land on her. Her eyes widen, and he knows what that look means.

“Shit. Nico, get out, I’ve got this.” She rushes over to the bed, cupping his face in her hands to keep his attention on her. “It’s okay. I’m right here, Chase. It’s not real. I’m real.”

She repeats it, again and again, and Chase doesn’t realize he’s crying until she wipes his cheek with her thumb. He hugs her a little frantically, holding her so tightly that he might be hurting her, but he can’t loosen his grip. Chase feels like she’ll disappear if he lets her go.

 _She’s alive, she’s alive, she’s alive._ He focuses hard on every soothing word she whispers into his ear, on the solidness of her body against his, trying to replace the memory of her dying in his arms with this moment. It never seemed real, before, losing her. It was awful enough to think about it happening in another timeline, to another version of her and another version of him, so he didn’t.

She was right – he’ll tell her that later, when he can speak again. He thought he’d been through enough pain and trauma that nothing else would register.

He was wrong. Chase never wants to feel this way again.

* * *

Chase knew he would feel different when he regained his memories. It was nine years, after all, but it feels like more. Chase feels a hundred years older.

There’s so much he hasn’t even had time to sort through, yet, because he did all this for a reason – Alex has to come first. He doesn’t want Alex to feel cornered, so he insisted on approaching him alone, although he finds comfort in knowing that Nico is using the Staff to eavesdrop in case something goes wrong and she needs to intervene. Chase hopes it won’t get that far.

Alex’s door is cracked open, and his expression changes from confusion to discomfort when Chase enters and shuts the door behind him. “What’s going on, man?”

“I need to tell you something. It’s really important, and I need you to stay calm, okay?”

Alex’s eyebrows rise. He and Chase have never been all that close, but the events of the past year have brought them as close as they’ll ever be, and even though Nico offered to talk to him, Chase thinks it’s better from the source. Maybe. Who knows. “What happened?”

“Can I sit?” Alex looks skeptical, but swings his legs over the side of the mattress, setting his laptop aside. Chase takes an uncomfortable seat next to him, playing with the spiral binding of the notebook in his hands. He takes a breath. “You’ve been having dreams too.”

It’s not really a question, even though Chase doesn’t know it with any kind of certainty until he sees every one of Alex’s muscles stiffen simultaneously. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t have to bullshit me, Alex. I know.” The silence between them is so thick, Chase thinks he’s going to choke on it. Alex just stares at him, like he’s not sure if Chase is fishing for something. “I know everything. I was having the dreams too. Except they’re not dreams – we got their memories, somehow. Our future selves. Nico helped me restore mine. I know who you turn out to be in that timeline. Who all of us turn out to be.”

Alex presses his lips together. “Yeah, well, we’re not in that timeline anymore.”

“Maybe not. I hope none of that shit ever happens, but I have to be sure.”

“So, what, you’re kicking me out of the hostel? Eradicating the threat before it happens?” Alex asks with a sharp, humorless laugh.

“Jesus, Wilder, of course not. I came to give you this.” Chase hands him the notebook, hoping he looks a lot more confident about this than he feels. If Alex betrays them, Chase is basically turning over a blueprint for exactly how to do it. But Nico, in many ways, knows him the best, so he’d chosen to listen to her advice. _Why should Alex stay loyal to us if we’re not loyal to him? We’ve never trusted him enough. Maybe it’s time we started._ Restoring his memories was still too dangerous, but this was a start. An olive branch. “It’s everything I know about what happens to you. How you end up betraying your friends. Working with Victorious. I don’t…” Chase swallows. “I don’t think our parents meant to become evil. I think it happened so gradually they didn’t even see it until it was too late. I want things to be different for us.”

Alex stares at the book in his hands, and for a minute, Chase has no idea how he’ll respond. He leans over, pulling a box out from under his bed and rifling through it, and Chase holds his breath, only letting it out when Alex pulls out a piece of paper instead of a gun or a syringe or something equally terrifying. Chase unfolds it carefully.

_1) Infiltrate Wilder Innovators_

_2) Hide Mancha_

_3) Kill Nico_

“It’s my handwriting, but I didn’t write it. I guess he left it for me to find, I don’t know.” Alex sinks his teeth into his lip, keeping his attention on the wall ahead of him. “I didn’t want to tell anyone, but you already know, so I guess it doesn’t matter, right?”

None of this comes as a surprise – he knows exactly why future Wilder wants Nico dead. It’s a chain reaction, and Chase knows that unraveling the future and saving all of his friends won’t be simple. But he rescued Gert, and Alex is opening up to him, and he hopes that’s enough for now.

“Look, I’m not proud of the things I did after Gert died, either,” Chase admits, refolding the paper and clutching it tightly in his hand. “But none of us have to be those people if we don’t want to be. We’ve fought so hard not to become our parents, we just – have to keep fighting.”

They’ll probably be fighting forever. Chase still hasn’t figured out if they have evil in their veins, or if their parents were good people who got caught up in bad circumstances. He’s not sure which possibility is more daunting, honestly.

“I don’t want to hurt Nico. I don’t want to hurt any of you. I’ve already done too much bad shit.” Alex exhales. “Listen, now that I know about him, I’m going to do everything in my power not to become him. I swear.”

It’s a little funny, Chase thinks, that he remembers Alex saying that in another time, another place when Alex doesn’t. But that’s not important. He just hopes it’s true. “I’m gonna hold you to that, Wilder.”

* * *

Even though she knows Nico was providing backup, Gert is still relieved when Chase returns unharmed. It’s not that she doesn’t trust Alex, she just – actually, she has no idea what to trust right now. She hasn’t, really, since the day she found out that everything in her life was a lie.

Gert immediately pulls him toward her, running her hands soothingly through his hair. Chase is heavy in her arms. He’s always had a weight on his shoulders, pretty much his whole life, but Gert is determined to help him share the burden this time. “What happened?”

“I don’t know. We talked. I guess we’ll find out if it helped soon enough.” He sighs into her skin, pulling back a little to look at her. “Can we lay down? I’m so tired.”

Gert nods and pulls him onto the bed until they’re curled up together, her head on his chest and her fingers tracing circles on his side. It’s under the guise of comforting him – and she hopes it does – but Gert is also trying to calm her racing mind. Anxiety does not beget patience, and it’s taking everything in her to avoid drowning Chase in a million questions when he’s already overwhelmed and exhausted.

“Your brain is really loud,” Chase says after a few minutes. His thumb brushes her shoulder, lightly, just to let her know he’s there. “I know you have questions, too. We can talk about them whenever you’re ready.”

Sometimes Chase is too selfless, and it makes her feel selfish in comparison. She made peace with never getting the answers, but only because no one had them – now Chase does, and she’s obsessing, which makes her feel awful, because having the answers is a much greater burden to him than wanting them is to her.

“How long?” She means to say _it can wait_ , but that slips out instead, and she doesn’t take it back. Not when it’s driving her crazy not to know.

Chase’s breathing gets a little shallower, like he was prepared for her to ask the question but he’s not sure how she’ll react to the answer. “Nine years. I came back from 2028.”

In that moment, Gert realizes the answer doesn’t matter. Her reaction was always going to be the same. She sits up, shaking her head fervently. “I wasn’t worth it.”

“Gert.”

“I wasn’t _worth it_ ,” she repeats, louder and sharper. “God, Chase, why didn’t you move on? Why did you let me ruin your whole life?”

Her voice breaks on the last word and she’s crying, now, she can feel it on her cheeks – she’s so selfish. She’s supposed to be helping him share the weight of this, but it’s so heavy that Gert feels like she’s suffocating.

Gert doesn’t know exactly what happened in those nine years, but the Chase she saw the day they defeated Morgan was miserable. He’d said life wasn’t worth living without her and no matter how hard she tries, she doesn’t know how to accept that. She wanted Chase to love her, but not like this, not at the expense of his happiness.

“Hey, hey. Breathe, Gert.” Chase leans his forehead against hers, brushing away her tears. Gert thinks she might be having a panic attack, but she can’t even tell because she’s not sure what the normal, healthy response to this situation would be. “It was worth it, because you’re here. I would do it all over again.”

She clings to him, crying harder for a few minutes as everything she’s been avoiding finally comes crashing down on her like a ton of bricks, and based on Chase’s unsteady breathing she might not be the only one. “I’m sorry,” she whispers when she finally calms down, and even she’s not sure if she’s apologizing for the panic attack or for dying.

“You saved the world, Gert. You don’t need to apologize for that.” Chase presses a kiss to her hair, rocking her gently as her breathing evens out. “I know that you might never really understand, because you don’t see yourself like I do. But I don’t regret anything. Even if it was selfish. I let you down so many times, and then I finally had a chance to do things right and you were gone. I couldn’t accept that.”

Gert sniffles, burying her face deeper into his shirt. It’s soaked, but he doesn’t even seem to notice. “There’s _nothing_ selfish about what you did, Chase.”

“I had a lot of reasons. They weren’t all selfish. I did it for Molly, because she didn’t deserve to lose any more family. And…the world needed you a lot more than it needed me. I knew you were destined to do so many amazing things. It wasn’t fair for me to live and you to be gone.”

“I’d like to strongly disagree with that.” Gert tilts back to give him a watery smile, even though she still feels like her head is spinning, because it breaks her heart that Chase has ever thought his life was somehow less valuable than hers. Maybe that’s love, though – because she thinks she would feel the same way. She did, in that brief moment where she thought _her_ Chase was dying in her arms. “You invented time travel. Don’t tell me you’re not capable of changing the world.”

He shoots her a weak smile in return. “Maybe we could. Together.” Chase cups her cheek, his thumb brushing softly against her temple, and Gert has to hold herself back from crumbling all over again at how intimate it feels. “That was my selfish reason. I was so lonely without you. Before…even when we were fighting, even when we weren’t talking, you were always around, and I could hold onto that. When you were gone, it felt like there was this hole I was never going to be able to fill.”

It’s terrifying, the way she feels about him. _The way they feel about each other_ , Gert corrects herself. She always thought she pushed him away because she was scared he would never want her, but maybe she was equally scared of what would happen if he did. She can’t blame the intensity of it on being runaways, or being seventeen and hormonal, or the rush of first love – not anymore. Not after everything they’ve done for each other, to protect what they have.

Gert wipes her face with her sleeve, feeling like she’ll explode if she continues this train of thought too much longer. “Shit, I just thought of something,” she says abruptly. “You know how to time travel. Or, at least, you will when the technology catches up. Are you going to rebuild the machine, or – whatever you used?”

Chase immediately shakes his head. It’s clear he’s already thought about it. “No. It’s too dangerous.”

“Are you sure? I mean, you have almost a _decade_ of future knowledge. Some people would kill for that.”

“Exactly. Alex helped me build it, and then he used it to try and kill us. I can’t let that happen to you or anyone else.” His fingers drop to her forearm, drawing calming circles into her skin. “Besides, I, um…I’m going to ask Nico to erase the memories. Once I know Alex is okay. I don’t want what I know to fall into the wrong hands and…” Chase looks at her, his expression so raw it makes her chest ache. “I don’t want to remember. Losing you. It hurts too much.”

Gert’s tempted to launch into another lecture about why using the Staff to remove his memories is even more reckless, but she doesn’t. Chase has already faced more pain in seventeen years than most people do in their entire lives, and if she loves him, she’ll support anything that helps.

She sighs, resting her hand on top of his. “Do you think our lives are always going to be like this?”

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I think we have something special and there will always be some responsibility that comes with that.” Chase smiles, softly, the kind of smile that feels like a thousand words. “But if you want a normal life, I’ll do whatever I can to make that happen. I’ll take whatever kind of life I can get with you.”

“You’re so cheesy,” Gert whispers, kissing him so he can’t see how weak he makes her. Their lives may never be normal again, never as simple as before they learned about Pride. But despite everything awful that’s happened, and everything that could still happen, Gert can’t help but think they could build a pretty good future.


End file.
